infonet-economy

Unlike the term ‘enterprise', which since the industrial phase primarily meant a capitalist organization with economical finalities (Berardi, 2009), ‘social entrepreneurship' has been introduced as something infinitely more emancipatory. What is at stake in social entrepreneurship is nothing less than the imagination of an alternative to the capitalist economy (Driver, 2012; Shaw & de Bruin, 2013); an alternative which places democracy, solidarity and equality (back) at the heart of the debate. When taking a closer look at this "hot word" and what it symbolizes, social entrepreneurship - due not least to its kinship with managerialism (Hjorth, 2013) and economic thought (Jones &Murtola, 2012) - is often nothing more than a cliché of its initial promise. Attempting to understand how such a conversion came about, but also to transgress the depoliticized image of social entrepreneurship, our contribution reverts to Roland Barthes' work on writing (1969; 1977) and mythology (1972) and Paul Ricoeur's (1974; 1986) hermeneutic philosophy. Premised on the idea that all symbols have two meanings (an explicit and an indirect or mythical meaning), this contribution grapples with the indirect meaning of social entrepreneurship as it pertains to ideological and utopian imagination. The guiding idea, indebted to Ricoeur, is that social entrepreneurship is not either ideological (in the sense of preserving the status quo) or utopian (in the sense of projecting alternatives to the present), but always both things at the same time. So understood, a critical hermeneutic of imagination comprises two complementary steps: first, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion' which is geared toward unmasking the ideological operation of a given symbol and, second, a "hermeneutic of affirmation' which uses the remainder of the demystified symbol to invent other possible worlds (Kearney, 2004).